CEO survey reveals wavering confidence among business leaders
About half of Australian business leaders are doubtful that the country is heading the right way on a number of policies and chief among their concerns were infrastructure priorities and superannuation guarantees.
In its 2010 CEO Survey, the Financial Services Council and PricewaterhouseCoopers found that only 44 percent of the polled chief executives believed that Australia is espousing the appropriate governance policy, with many more fearful that the country could be in for greater trouble than what has been projected.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers wealth management head Andrew Wilson, an estimated 20 percent of Australians would reach retirement age on 2050 and would start drawing from their super funds, which could lead to added pressures on the economy.
Mr Wilson said that such a spectre could render the super savings bleeding more money faster than it could replenish its stocks and such scenario could impede economic and equity growths as investors would be forced to dump longer-term investments in favour of conservative choices.
The report said that the respondents were looking at the government in enhancing the capacity of the retirement funds to handle such demand influx and all agreed that the only way to do it is by "increasing the mandatory superannuation guarantee and broadening the availability of superannuation advice."
On the other hand, an overwhelming 95 percent of those polled were also questioning the country's infrastructure policy, which they doubt would hardly meet Australia's future requirements.
Financial Services Council chief executive John Brogden said that "if Australia continues with its current approach to funding we will fall well short of meeting our infrastructure needs both now and into the future."
Also, many of the Australian CEOs also suggested that the country may be missing out on another opportunity as they believed that the country's policy managers should prepare the nation as a potential regional financial services hub that could rival the existing leaders on the sector such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Switzerland, though the survey emphasised that business leaders were still unsure if the plan is doable and viable.